Tuesday, April 28, 2009

This cover of Stand By Me was recorded by completely unknown artists in a street virtual studio all around the world. It all started with a base track—vocals and guitar—recorded on the streets of Santa Monica, California:

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

That's a title that will get attention. It's a perfectly ironic title of an article from Live Science.

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I was writing an ethics paper on the use of cybernetic technology to increase human cognitive capacities.

If you want, scan through the article, but I'm going to highlight the relevant points here for my paper.

A few weeks ago I was chatting with my room mate envisioning a not to distant future where current technology would be further fused to our being. I see the progression as being from accessing the internet at a hub (desktop) to an every present access in the palm of your hands to, well, something a little more intrinsic. The article has a nice anecdote to convey the gist: "You're already paying per month to access that growing cloud of stuff you care about. And you've become a slave to charging batteries and synchronizing platforms. You're already adorned in wearable devices. Next step for you: implanted ones. Our very human need to "always be on top of things" powerfully pushes us in the direction of robotic enhancement. It's precisely what drove your grandparents to buy that first TV."

"If you have virtually limitless entertainment everywhere you are, why would you ever go anywhere at all?" This reminds me of a Star Trek TNG Episode (The Game) and was also alluded to in a scene of Children of Men giving a glimpse into the lives of the elite in a not to distant dystopian earth scenario.

"So the root question becomes: Will we be able to impart ambition and curiosity into Hubot Roboman?" The issue of ambition and curiosity is an excellent starting point for defining what it means to be human.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Yet again I had a brilliant idea (the iTunes-esque unified media browser) only to be brought to fruition by someone else, this time by the folks at Mozilla (Firefox). I'm proud to say this time I had documented evidence and was nearly two months ahead. :P

Sunday, April 12, 2009

I start sweating just thinking about the burrito I ate with the single mystery pepper that some kids from my apartments sold me. Turned out it was a Serrano pepper ranked at 25,000 on the Scoville scale. 5x's the level of a Jalapeno.

A woman in India just set the new world record for eating the hottest peppers. The chili peppers known as "ghost chili" that she consumed rank 1,000,000 on the Scoville! And she ate 51 in 2 minutes. To top it off, her victory dance consisted of rubbing them in her eyes.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

I acknowledge the complete void of personal narrative in my blogging the last few months. Life has been a whirl-wind of wedding planning (I'm pretty proud of the work I've done on the blog for our wedding; just click the link), academics (Psychology, Philosophy, Sociology, History), working (hanging out and sometimes imparting knowledge with a bunch of awesome kindergarten-5th graders), and loving on my neighbors in Rockwood (consists of weekly community meals, youth parties, and just being friends).

Elena and I are both being intentionally in stepping back from commitments this term in order to not be burnt out by our June 14th wedding date. Our premarital mentors have been awesome and have continued to give us the opportunity and encouragement to seek both the reality and beauty of marriage. Part of this reality has catapulted me into a full fledge job hunt. My current job does not run through the summer and I will be finishing my undergraduate degree within the next 6 months. I set a lofty goal last week to submit a resume a day. I'm hoping this will prove to be fruitful.

I didn't only put Cyborgs in the title to catch your attention. I have decided to write my Ethics term paper on the use of cybernetic technology to increase human cognitive capacities. I am particularly fascinated by this topic because of it's tendency to create a knee jerk response as abominable and unnatural (even for myself) where as there many equally "abominable and unnatural" technologies that we casually engage with and embrace without thinking twice. If I have time, I will blog through the different elements of the paper and any articles I find online that relate.

Last personal tid-bit. Four months ago I started by complete read through of the Bible. It has been an awesome journey of discovering completely new pieces of Scripture and providing a much more solid framework of Scripture to operate within for daily life. Yesterday I just finished 2 Samuel (which I liked much better then the 1st). I will become "even more undignified than this..."

Thursday, April 02, 2009

She couldn't remember the address on a house but knew the general area. So we plugged in a nearby intersection and went hunting for the house in Street View. As we approached the vicinity we noticed something that caught us by suprise in front of the house:

In case you don't know, Elena drives a blue Toyota Corolla - in fact, that exact Corolla (we even verified with the parking passes on the back windshield). Besides that eerie reminder of the age we live in, street view served it's purpose perfectly and we were able to nail down the house address. :P